LI Research Partners
The Labrador Institute has interests in an array of research topics that span several diverse disciplines. The following individuals represent various faculties, disciplines, and universities that are involved in carrying out research in or about Labrador.
Dr. Douglas Wharram
Dr. Douglas Wharram is Coordinator of the Aboriginal Studies Minor Programme and Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Memorial University. As a formal semanticist, Dr. Wharram is presently engaged in investigations into the interpretational properties of indefinite noun phrases. Specifically, he works on Inuktitut (Labrador Inuttut and South Baffin, even more specifically), and, to a much lesser extent, Kalaallisut.
Dr. Trevor J. Bell
Dr. Trevor Bell is a physical geographer and field scientist who studies landscape and seabed history from a variety of perspectives to address a range of research questions from theoretical to applied. His approach is strongly interdisciplinary and collaborative, involving analysis and expertise from a range of disciplines in the earth, life, and social sciences. Dr. Bell is a researcher with the Labrador Highlands Research Group of Memorial University.
Dr. John D. Jacobs
Dr. John Jacobs is a geographer whose current research is concerned with climate variability and change in northeastern Canada and includes field-based studies in Newfoundland and Labrador of highland climates and ecosystems. Other research has focussed on the hydroclimatology and chemistry of seasonally snow-covered watersheds. Dr. Jacobsis a researcher with the Labrador Highlands Research Group of Memorial University.
Dr. Luise Hermanutz
Dr. Luise Hermanutz is a biologist at Memorial University whose research interests include: Conservation Biology of endangered species, Plant Ecology (arctic-alpine & boreal systems); Protected Areas Strategies, Invasive species biology and impact; Climate change effects on boreal & arctic ecosystems. Dr. Hermanutz currently has field project in: Mealy Mountains, Labrador; Terra Nova NP, Gros Morne NP, Great Northern Peninsula. Dr. Hermanutz is a researcher with the Labrador Highlands Research Group of Memorial University.
Dr. Alvin Simms
Dr. Alvin Simms is a geographer with a specialty in GIS and Spatial Analysis. He spent 10 years as a research scientist with the Centre for Cold Ocean Resources Engineering (C-CORE) and has 15 years of experience studying environmental hazards associated with offshore oil exploration and devlopment in Eastern Canada and the Beaufort Sea. Currently, his research focuses on spatial analysis and GIS based modeling applications related to regional planning and development, health services as well as social-economic and resource management issues. He is a researcher with the Labrador Highlands Research Group of Memorial University.
Dr. Keith P. Lewis
Dr. Keith P. Lewis is a post-doctoral fellow and lecuturer at Memorial University. Much of his past work has been with songbirds and his interests have been in testing various ways in which invasive species influence the predation of nest birds in Newfoundland. As a member of the Labrador Highlands Research Group, Dr. Lewis' interests have expanded into two main areas of interest: seed dispersal and avian habitat use.
Dr. Paul Marino
Dr. Paul Marino specializes in Bryophyte and Agricultural Ecology. His interests are: bryophyte ecology; plant-insect interactions; agricultural ecology; biological control. He is a researcher with the Labrador Highlands Research Group of Memorial University.
Dr. J.R. Pickavance
Dr. J.R. Pickavance is a researcher with the Labrador Highlands Research Group. Dr. Pickavance's research focuses on the population biology, sytematics and natural history of spiders and other invertebrate animals.
Dr. Colin Laroque
Dr. Colin Laroque teaches in the Department of Geography and Environment at Mount Allison University. Dr. Laroque's research interests focus on past and future climates in Canada, especially on how they relate to dynamic ecosystem and geomorphological processes. His specialization is dendrochronology (tree-ring analysis) and he uses dendrochronological techniques to gain an understanding about past climates, past glacier activity and extent, past ecosystem dynamics, and even past human activities. Dr. Laroque is a researcher with the Labrador Highlands Research Group of Memorial University.
Dr. Angela Robinson
Dr. Angela Robinson is a faculty member at Grenfell Campus, teaching courses in social, cultural anthropology, and Newfoundland culture and society focusing on Aboriginal populations. For the past 14 years she has conducted research among the Mi’kmaw people throughout Atlantic Canada. Her previous research concentrated on the ways in which different world views/life worlds form(ed) the basis of Mi’kmaw religious beliefs and expressions. Her 2005 book, Ta’n Teli-ktlams†tasit (Ways of Believing), considers the complexity and diversity of Mi’kmaw belief systems, including Mi’kmaw Catholicism, Catholic-Traditionalism, and neo-Traditionalism. Currently, she is conducting field research in Burgeo, Conne River, Bay St. George, Port au Port, Nain and Goose Bay. Generally, Dr. Robinson’s research involves the collection of ethnographic materials including the oral histories of Aboriginal peoples who offer compelling, significant, and rather complex perspectives on life in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Labrador portion of her research agenda is an examination of how unions are interacting with Aboriginal governments and organizations in reference to mining developments in the region. Dr. Robinson is also working in collaboration with Ms. Martha MacDonald (Labrador Institute) and Ms. Charlotte Jones ( Grenfell Campus Art Gallery) on an upcoming Conference titled “Imaging and Imagining: Expressing Aboriginal Identity and Experience”.
Dr. David Natcher
Dr. David Natcher is trained as an applied cultural anthropologist, with a specific focus on economic and natural resource anthropology. Dr. Natcher has held faculty appointments at the University of Alaska (Anthropology) and Memorial University of Newfoundland. While at Memorial University he held a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Studies (2004-2007). He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioresource Policy, Business and Economics at the University of Saskatchewan where he also serves as Academic Chair of the Indigenous Peoples Resource Management Program and Executive Director of the Indigenous Land Management Institute.
Dr. Stephen Loring
Dr. Stephen Loring was born and grew-up in Concord, Massachusetts where he was deeply influenced by the writings (and antiquarian pursuits) of Henry David Thoreau and by the vestiges of a "natural" New England landscape that had not yet completely succumbed to suburban sprawl. Literally weeks spent on the Concord and Merrimac (as well as the Sudbury and Assabeth) Rivers allowed him to pursue his decidedly 19th-century antiquarian proclivities to search for arrowheads and possibly extinct species of birds, and catch reptiles and amphibians of all sorts. These are activities best pursued from a canoe in latitudes ranging from 52 to 65 degrees north, although in his younger days he was known to habituate swamps in the deep south. Between about 1971 and 1976 he spent a disproportionate amount of time in northern Quebec and Labrador. There hunger drove him to become a hunter and there he befriended other hunters, some like himself and others from Innu and Inuit communities.
Dr. Stephen Loring ia an anthropologist and archaeologist who has been working in Labrador since 1975. He is a Museum Anthropologist/Arctic Archaeologist with the Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Dr. Stephen Loring ia an anthropologist and archaeologist who has been working in Labrador since 1975. He is a Museum Anthropologist/Arctic Archaeologist with the Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Dr. John Thistle
Dr. John Thistle is a geographer who has just finished his stint as the LI's post-doctoral fellow in Labrador West. John's research project is entitled: “Making an Iron Ore Landscape”. As the title suggests, John investigated mining issues in Lab West.
Dr. Johnanna Wolf
Dr. Johanna Wolf is a human geographer with degrees in both applied and social science. Her interests concern societal responses to climate change and its impacts, including both adaptation and mitigation.
Scott Neilsen
Scott Neilsen is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Memorial University and an independent heritage resource consultant. He currently lives in Northwest River, Labrador with his wife and two daughters. Mr. Neilsen’s primary research focus is on the long-term history of indigenous people in eastern Quebec and Labrador, and their relations with one-another, settlers, visitors and the environment. More generally, he is interested in “hunter-gatherer” culture and history from around the world, and the impact of climate and the environment on their immediate adaptations and long-term transformations. As an instructor he also has an interest in archaeological and anthropological theory, and the history and role of these disciplines in society. Scott has worked as a heritage resource consultant on many small and large scale development projects throughout Atlantic Canada, and maintains an interest in cultural resource management and Indigenous rights in Canada.
Rachel Hirsch
Rachel Hirsch is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and a Labrador Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her postgraduate work was conducted at the University of Western Ontario and she recently completed her first postdoctoral fellowship at York University. She is a past recipient of a Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Master's Canada Graduate Scholarship, a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and a Society for Risk Analysis Student Paper Award in Risk Communication. Rachel's postdoctoral work expands on her doctoral research by exploring how everyday decision-making about environmental health information, across scales from communities through to the federal government in Canada, can inform government initiatives to promote healthy communities and cities. For the last year, Rachel has also been actively involved—as principal investigator—in the development and implementation of a technique called knowledge tracking meant to assess the use and exchange of a local message from Iqaluit, Nunavut about climate change and health by municipal, territorial, and federal policy actors. Rachel maintains connections with York University as an Executive Member of the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability and as co-chair of the Climate Consortium for Research Action Integration working group on interdisciplinary collaboration.
Andrea Procter
Andrea Procter is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Memorial University where she is working on her thesis “Cultural politics of natural resource management in Nunatsiavut, Labrador”. Ms. Procter’s research interests include The role of cultural politics in land claims negotiations and implementation, resource management and inequality, land use planning, co-management, decolonialization, and the politics of recognition.
Carolina Tytelman
Carolina Tytelman is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Memorial University. Her project is entitled: “People and Trees: Forest Co-Management in Nitassinan-Labrador”.
